Welcome to my gardening blog. I'll share with you the plants that can tough it out in south Louisiana.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Oak Alley Plantation

This weekend was the Oak Alley Fall Festival at the Oak Alley plantation in Vacherie, LA. The festival features arts and crafts from mostly local vendors. The vendors bring handmade jewelery, paintings, crafts, and food.

Here is a picture of the plantation. It has an alley made by Live Oak trees planted in two long rows. These oaks are huge and are over a hundred years old.

This is one of the oak trees that make up the alley way. Can you see Dave at the bottom of the trunk? I wanted him to be in the picture to give you a sense of how big the oaks are.

This is a close up of the front of Oak Alley. Its such a beautiful place!

Side view of the front. You can tour the inside of Oak Alley, but it is expensive and they don't allow pictures inside. The ladies that give the tour dress up in clothes that people from the 1800's wore. You can see some of them in this picture.

I love this picture! Live Oaks are huge trees with long draping branches. This picture shows how the tree grows up, then, when it is very old, the branches drape to the ground.

Here is Dave kneeling down by trunk of a live oak. This tree is very old!

Here is what I bought at the festival:

I love Louisiana swamp pictures.

This is a very special picture because it is made from MUD! Can you believe that? The artist travels around Louisiana and collects different types of mud (all mud had its own unique color) and he uses mud to paint with!! The white parts of the picture are unpainted canvas.

I love black and white paintings! This is a swamp scene and thats why I love it. There is a houseboat in the background and two people on small boats collecting moss.

This is my most unique purchase: a crab shell painted in LSU colors. Its a Christmas ornament! I couldn't pass it up. This is a Christmas present for my in laws. They are huge LSU fans. They've had season tickets for 20 years and never miss a game. I know they will love it!

2 comments:

I've always wanted to go to Oak Alley, but have never had the chance. I love the paintings! Thanks for this post. Live oaks are on my top 10 favorite tree list.David/ Tropical Texana/ HoustonP.S. You would not believe the number of LSU fans we have here! :-)